"It's not a right, it's a racket"

The comedians seem to be stepping up to replace the sadly lacking state of journalism. I guess that's really an old thing, going back to Shakespeare, at least, when it was only the court jester who could speak truth to power.

Now add Bill Maher to the list that's headed by Jon Stewart. Today on Huffington Post Maher has an essay titled, "New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit."

He begins by talking about the stigma that once was attached to "war profiteers." Instead, now we have practically turned our military over to the corporate world -- not only as in the highly lucrative weapons manufacture but simply in running the war. Contracts for daily needs of our troops like food and laundry are privatized with lucrative contracts to companies designed just to provide those services -- and rake in the cash.

Maher goes on to decry the privatization of prisons. But his real topic is health care.

And finally, there's health care. . . .[L]ike everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. . . . [T]he Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. . . .

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

How right you are, Bill, in addition to being funny. Who came closest to telling the truth about our health care system? Michael Moore in his film, "Sicko." Yes, he probably was a bit selective in choosing examples to dramatize, and his method is ridicule -- but isn't that exactly what the Republicans do in denouncing health care reform?

Are we going to let the Michele Bachmanns and the Jim DeMints defeat health care reform -- out of purely selfish or political motives, demonstrating that their concern is not for the American people but for maintaining their own position of privilege and greed?

Ralph